behind the numbers and spin, nbc news presidential historian, michael beschloss, ruth markus, and "washington journal"'s major garrett. >> michael, we've talked in the past about october surprises and here you have a super storm, hurricane sandy, transforming at least the last five days of this campaign. what is the impact of that? >> well, i think it allows a voters to go into the polls with a look at barack obama that was pretty bipartisan and pretty presidential. that might not have been the case, had sandy not come along. when we look at the election from 20 or 30 years from now we will remember sandy, but we'll remember more the overall contours the fact that this is a country extremely divided on very basic issues. >> a country extremely divided, it doesn't get closer than susan page, your final gallup swing state poll. let's look at your numbers. >> this is our 11th in a series of polls, of 12 swing states we've done over the past year. in our final poll, 48-48 among likely voters. that shows some resurgence by president obama in the poll we did in early october. weighs down four among